THE EARLY FRENCH MEMBERS OF THE AMERICAN 

 PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 



By J. G. ROSENGARTEN. 



{Read April i8, 1907.) 



Ill 1768 Buff on was elected, the first Frenchman to become a 

 member of this Society, and thus the first of a long list of his 

 countrymen chosen for this honorable distinction. In the same 

 year Du Simitiere was elected, still remembered as a local antiqua- 

 rian, and he brought some French spirit into this Society, — he was 

 diligent in his attendance and active in adding to its collections. In 

 those colonial days naturally the ties with the mother country were 

 very close, and in the same year General Gage and Sir Wm. Johnson 

 were elected. Buff on, Linnseus, elected in 1769, and Benjamin 

 West were presented with the Society's publications. In 1772, Le 

 Roy of the Academy of Sciences in Paris was elected. In 1775 

 Franklin, President in the chair, presented books by several French 

 authors, Decquemare, Dennis, Rozier, Condorcet, Daubenton, Du- 

 bourg, Le Roux, Raynal, Lavoisier, and they were elected. *' The 

 calamities of war " interrupted the meetings and they were not re- 

 sumed until the British had evacuated Philadelphia. 



After the meetings were resumed, Gerard de Rayneval, the first 

 French Minister sent here was elected, and a bound volume of the 

 Transactions was preseiited to him, and received with expression of 

 his intention to forward the interests of the Society in France. 

 He attended the meetings and agreed to forward thanks to Buffon 

 for the gift of his works. The example thus set was followed by 

 the election of his successors, Ternant, Luzerne, Adet, Otto, Genet, 

 Fauchet, and in later years of Hyde de Neuville and Poussin — all 

 French Ministers here. In 1781 La Fayette and his companion in 

 arms Chastellux were elected, and Barbe de Marbois, the French 

 Consul in Philadelphia, whose death the Society mourned in 1837, — 

 in his ninety-fifth year. In 1784 \"ergennes, and in 1785 Guichen, 



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